Anthills of the Savannah

by Chinua Achebe

  If indeed they were his victims, repeated Beatrice in her mind. The very thought that had already visited her dressed, albeit, differently! The explanation of the tragedy of Chris and Ikem in terms of petty human calculation or personal accident had begun to give way in her throbbing mind to an altogether more terrifying but more plausible theory of premeditation. The image of Chris as just another stranger who chanced upon death on the Great North Road or Ikem as an early victim of a waxing police state was no longer satisfactory. Were they not in fact trailed travellers whose journeys from start to finish had been carefully programmed in advance by an alienated history? If so, how many more doomed voyagers were already in transit or just setting out, faces fresh with illusions of duty-free travel and happy landings ahead of them?

  That was the day she broke her long silence and asked the two young men: “What must a people do to appease an embittered history?”

  The smiles that lit up the faces in the room, especially of the two indefatigable debaters stopped in their tracks, were not addressed to that grave question and its train of echoes from a bottomless pit of sadness. It was rather the ending of an exile that the faces acknowledged, the return of utterance to the sceptical priest struck dumb for a season by the Almighty for presuming to set limits to his omnipotence.

  It was not that Beatrice had spoken no words at all before that day. She said hello and even, on occasion, offered hospitality. Certainly she had resumed work in her office one week after Chris’s burial; and at home she conducted her domestic life in the company of Elewa and Agatha. But in all this she had only used words that did not threaten to invade her thoughts and drag them into the profanity of the open air. She became more accessible only in slow stages, egged on usually by one little crisis or another in her small community.

  Abdul had confided to her that he had been assigned (or had assigned himself—it wasn’t too clear which) to watch her and her friends. She had smiled and said, “Good luck!” Weeks later she had decided in fairness to inform Emmanuel. He was outraged.

  “The fellow is an agent provocateur. How can we be so naive?”

  “We? You are such a gentleman, Emmanuel. The weeks with Chris, cooped up together and conspiring, I see, have left their mark. But, no; I’m not naive. The fellow is quite genuine.”

  “How?”

  “Woman’s intuition, if you like.”

  “Since when?”

  “What do you mean since when? Are you asking me since when have I become a woman?… And I have just called you a gentleman.”

  For a while after that Emmanuel had shown his resentment by ostentatiously keeping sealed lips whenever Abdul was around. Beatrice watched the two without further intervention. In the end it was curiosity which killed the cat of Emmanuel’s silence. It all happened over the rumour about Colonel Johnson Ossai.

  “Is it really true that he is missing?” Emmanuel had asked in spite of himself. Abdul had simply nodded without deigning to open his mouth. He had become aware of Emmanuel’s suspicion and had adopted what Beatrice considered a most sophisticated response—simply ignored it and him.

  “But how can a whole boss of State Security just disappear? Like that!”

  “I believe you had already left Bassa when the boss of the State itself went missing.” Then he positioned himself as if he was talking to Beatrice and the others. “I can give a few facts that have emerged so far. Colonel Ossai was last seen going in to see the Head of State and has not been sighted ever since. You remember Idi Amin? Well, according to unconfirmed reports he used to strangle and behead his rivals for women and put their head in the fridge as a kind of trophy. So perhaps Colonel Ossai is in the cooler, somewhere.”

  “You don’t sound too concerned about your boss,” said Beatrice. “That’s awful, you know.”

  “If I told you half of what I know about Ossai you wouldn’t be too concerned either.”

  “What a life!” said Emmanuel.

  “Anyway, soldiering is not a sentimental profession. The first thing we learn is: Soja come, soja gwo.”

  But all that was weeks and months behind them—weeks and months of slow preparation for today’s ritual outing.

  When Elewa moved up to Beatrice and whispered into her ear what she had just come to suspect as the probable reason for her mother not being there yet Beatrice decided to perform the naming herself and to do it right away. She called the little assembly to order and proceeded to improvise a ritual.

  She picked up the tiny bundle from its cot and, turning to Elewa, said: “Name this child.”

  “Na you go name am.”

  “OK. You just saved a false step, anyway. Thanks. I will start afresh… There was an Old Testament prophet who named his son The-remnant-shall-return. They must have lived in times like this. We have a different metaphor, though; we have our own version of hope that springs eternal. We shall call this child AMAECHINA: May-the-path-never-close. Ama for short.”

  “But that’s a boy’s name.”

  “No matter.”

  “Girl fit answer am also.”

  “It’s a beautiful name. The Path of Ikem.”

  “That’s right. May it never close, never overgrow.”

  “Das right!”

  “May it always shine! The Shining Path of Ikem.”

  “Dat na wonderful name.”

  “Na fine name so.”

  “In our traditional society,” resumed Beatrice, “the father named the child. But the man who should have done it today is absent… Stop that sniffling, Elewa! The man is not here although I know he is floating around us now, watching with that small-boy smile of his. I am used to teasing him and I will tease him now. What does a man know about a child anyway that he should presume to give it a name…”

  “Nothing except that his wife told him he is the father,” said Abdul, causing much laughter.

  “Na true my brother,” said Braimoh. “Na woman de come tell man say na him born the child. Then the man begin make inyanga and begin answer father. Na yéyé father we be.”

  “Exactly. So I think our tradition is faulty there. It is really safest to ask the mother what her child is or means or should be called. So Elewa should really be holding Ama and telling us what she is. What it was like to be loved by that beautiful man Ikem. But Elewa is too shy. Look at her!”

  “I no shy at all,” she replied, her eyes smiling and holding back tears at the same time like bright sunshine through a thin drizzle. “I no shy but I no sabi book.”

  “Dis no be book matter, my sister.”

  “You no sabi book but you sabi plenty thing wey pass book, my dear girl.”

  “Say that again,” said Emmanuel.

  “I concur,” said Captain Medani.

  “Dat na true word,” said Braimoh.

  “I tell you!” said Aina.

  “All of we,” continued Beatrice, “done see baad time; but na you one, Elewa, come produce something wonderful like this to show your sufferhead. Something alive and kicking.”

  “That’s true. Very true,” said the Captain.

  “But living ideas…” Emmanuel began haltingly.

  “Ideas cannot live outside people,” said Beatrice rather peremptorily stopping him in mid-stride. He obeyed for a second, scratched his head and came right back blurting defiantly:

  “I don’t accept that. The ideas in one lecture by Ikem changed my entire life from a parrot to a man.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. And the lives of some of my friends. It wasn’t Ikem the man who changed me. I hardly knew him. It was his ideas set down on paper. One idea in particular: that we may accept a limitation on our actions but never, under no circumstances, must we accept restriction on our thinking.”

  “OK,” said Beatrice bowing to this superior, unstoppable passion. “I have also felt what you are saying, though I knew him too as a man. You win! People and Ideas, then. We shall drink to both of them.”

  As Agatha brought in a tray of drinks and
burst into one of the songs of her sect—something with which she had never before graced this house—Emmanuel took the tray from her and placed it on the centre table. Adamma fetched the glasses and they began to serve. Agatha’s hands freed meanwhile found more fitting occupation clapping her own accompaniment, and her waist swayed in slow dance.

  Jehova is not a person anyone can deceive

  Jehova is so great who is it can confuse him?

  If Jehova wants to bless who will dare to raise a curse?

  Jehova-jireh let us raise his name!

  Aina raised herself from her seat, untied and re-tied her outer lappa and joined Agatha in her holy seductive dance.

  “Abi Aina no be Moslem?” Beatrice asked Elewa in a whisper.

  “Na proper grade one Moslem,” she replied wondering by way of a puzzled look what the point of the question was. Then she seemed all of a sudden to discern the questioner’s difficulty. “Dem talk say make Moslem no dance when Christian de sing?” she asked in return.

  “No I didn’t mean that,” replied Beatrice rather emphatically. But to herself she said, “Well, if a daughter of Allah could join his rival’s daughter in a holy dance, what is to stop the priestess of the unknown god from shaking a leg?” She smiled to herself. She was already swaying her head from side to side in lieu of hands which were still attempting to rock Ama to sleep.

  After five or six repeats of the same words of the catchy little song Braimoh shouted: “Heep! Heep! Heep!” and the ecumenical fraternization was neatly terminated with a lusty “Hooray!” and laughter.

  It was at this point that a taxi pulled up outside and discharged Elewa’s mother and uncle. Beatrice and Elewa turned spontaneously to each other, one saying, “You were right,” and the other, “I no tell you!”, at the same time.

  Beatrice knew Elewa’s uncle by an unsavoury reputation which he now seemed quite determined to live up to. Before he fairly sat down his eyes had become glued to the tray of drinks and his Adam’s apple danced restlessly like the trapped bubble in a bricklayer’s spirit-level.

  “Elewa, won’t you offer a drink to Mama and your uncle?”

  Mama accepted a bottle of mineral water but the uncle declined the beer which was offered him demanding “Snaps” instead. When he was told there was no schnapps in the house he merely said, “Ah?”—a compressed but eloquent way of saying: A naming ceremony indeed, without schnapps.

  Beatrice got up, put the baby down in her cot, went to the sideboard and soon returned with a bottle of White Horse whisky. Elewa’s uncle accepted the substitute quite readily and proceeded to swill two thimblefuls in quick succession throwing his head slightly back for the operation and working his cheeks like a pair of little bellows before swallowing. He put the little glass down and then asked for a bottle of beer.

  Looking sideways at her late husband’s half-brother Elewa’s mother said: “It is better that we begin the work we came to do. I don’t want anyone dropping my grandchild.”

  “Nobody is going to drop anybody,” replied the uncle lifting his glass of beer to his lips with a lightly quivering hand… “Drink does not loosen a man’s grip. It makes it stronger,” he added after gulping down half of the glass… “But since my wife here is troubled, let us agree with her and do as she says. A wise man agrees with his wife and eats lumps of smoked fish in his soup. A fool contradicts his wife and eats lumps of cocoyam.”

  Abdul’s head was tilted towards Emmanuel who was translating the old people for him. Now all eyes turned to Beatrice. She had picked up the baby again, but instead of handing her to the old man who had set down his glass once more to receive it she said:

  “This baby has already received its name. She is called Amaechina.”

  The old people were visibly stunned. The man recovered first and asked: “Who gave her the name?”

  “All of us here,” said Beatrice.

  “All of you here,” repeated the old man. “All of you are her father?”

  “Yes, and mother.”

  His explosion into laughter took everybody by surprise and then dragged them all into his bombshell of gaiety. Except Elewa’s mother.

  “You young people,” said the old man. “What you will bring this world to is pregnant and nursing a baby at the same time… Give me a little more of that hot drink.”

  Elewa rushed the whisky bottle and the little glass back to him.

  “A jolly old fellow,” said Abdul.

  “You no know am. So make you wait small.”

  Elewa’s poor mother was left high and dry carrying the anger of outraged custom and usage made none the lighter for having no one to focus it on. In the end she turned and heaped it on the opportunistic old man, a medicine-man hired to chase evil spirits whom evil spirits were now chasing.

  “You will return my bottle of Snaps and the fowl,” she said to him, to everyone’s surprise. His face clouded over for a very brief instant and quickly cleared up again.

  “As to that,” he said, “what is brought out before a masquerade cannot be taken indoors again. Food goes one way—downwards. If you see it going up you know the man is in trouble.”

  “You will return my Snaps and the fowl,” she repeated obstinately.

  “Listen to me my wife and let me give you advice. You are annoyed and I cannot say that I blame you. But what is the use of bending your neck at me like the chicken to the pot when its real enemy is not the pot in which it cooks nor even the fire which cooks it but the knife. Your quarrel is with these young people. Hold your daughter and her friends to refund to you your bottle of Snaps and your fowl. But as for the tribute placed in front of a masquerade, that one is gone with the masquerade into its ant-hole.” He went into another paroxysm of laughter scraping his sides which he now held like a loosening bundle between his palms. Everybody joined him once more, except Elewa’s mother. He stopped abruptly and turned to the rest:

  “Let me tell you people something. When my wife here came to me and said: Our daughter has a child and I want you to come and give her a name, I said to myself: Something is amiss. We did not hear kpom to tell us that the palm branch has been cut before we heard waa when it crashed through the bush. I did not hear of bride-price and you are telling me about naming a child. But I did not contradict my wife because I want fish in my soup… Do you know why I am laughing like this? I am laughing because in you young people our world has met its match. Yes! You have put the world where it should sit… My wife here was breaking her head looking for kolanuts, for alligator pepper, for honey and for bitter-leaf…”

  “And Snaps and agriculture chicken.”

  “True. Those as well. And while she is cracking her head you people gather in this whiteman house and give the girl a boy’s name… That is how to handle this world… If anybody thinks that I will start a fight because somebody has done the work I should do that person does not know me. I only fight when somebody else eats what I should eat. So I will not fight. Rather I will say thank you. I will say whoever ate the foofoo let him mop up the soup as well. A child has been named. What else is one looking for at the bottom of the soup-bowl if not fish? Wherever the child sleeps let it wake up in the morning, is my prayer… My wife, where is that kolanut? I shall break it after all.”

  Everybody applauded this strange man’s sudden decision, sparked off perhaps by the utterance of the word prayer. Elewa’s mother could not keep up against the powerful current in favour of the old man. She opened her bag and handed a kolanut to him.

  “Elewa, go and wash this and put it into a plate and bring me water to wash my hands.”

  Elewa and Agatha went into the kitchen to do as the old man had commanded. After he had washed his hands and wiped them importantly with a sparkling napkin that contrasted so harshly with his own dirt-and-sweat-tarnished jumper that used to be of white lace he assumed a sacramental posture, picked up the kolanut in his right hand and held it between four fingers and thumb, palm up, to the Almighty.

  “Owner of the world!
Man of countless names! The church people call you three-in-one. It is a good name. But it carries miserly and insufficient praise. Four-hundred-in-one would seem more fitting in our eyes. But we have no quarrel with church people; we have no quarrel with mosque people. Their intentions are good, their mind on the right road. Only the hand fails to throw as straight as the eye sees. We praise a man when he slaughters a fowl so that if his hand becomes stronger tomorrow he will slaughter a goat…

  “What brings us here is the child you sent us. May her path be straight…”

  “Isé!” replied all the company.

  “May she have life and may her mother have life.”

  “Isé!”

  “What happened to her father, may it not happen again.”

  “Isé!”

  “When I asked who named her they told me All of Us. May this child be the daughter of all of us.”

  “Isé!”

  “May all of us have life!”

  “Isé!”

  “May these young people here when they make the plans for their world not forget her. And all other children.”

  “Isé!”

  “May they also remember useless old people like myself and Elewa’s mother when they are making their plans.”

  “Isé!”

  “We have seen too much trouble in Kangan since the white man left because those who make plans make plans for themselves only and their families.”

  Abdul was nodding energetically, his head bent gently towards his simultaneous translator, Emmanuel.

  “I say, there is too much fighting in Kangan, too much killing. But fighting will not begin unless there is first a thrusting of fingers into eyes. Anybody who wants to outlaw fights must first outlaw the provocation of fingers thrust into eyes.”

  “Isé! Isé!!”

  Abdul, a relative stranger to the kolanut ritual, was carried away beyond the accustomed limits of choral support right into exuberant hand-clapping.

  “I have never entered a house like this before. May this not be my last time.”

  “Isé!”